A.R. Kane, “Haunted”>>>>>>>My Bloody Valentine, "Instrumental","the bonus 7 inch included with Isn't Anything....the band more or less abscond, leaving only a hip hop rhythm track over which this ectoplasm weaves in and out of silence in a mournful, private dance. ... like something by Erik Satie arranged by Keith Levine. Imagine the ghostly echo of ancient psalms drifting through an abbey in a drowned village..... Kevin: "The thing is, the sound literally isn't all there. It's actually the opposite of rock'n'roll. It's taking all the guts out of it, there's no guts, just the remnants, the outline. It's like - did you ever walk around in the city on a Sunday, somewhere like the East End, or The Angel - and there's this dead, where-is-everybody feel. Nobody's about, all these millions of buildings, but not asoul around. That kind of deserted feel. Not spooky, you're not made uncomfortable. But you're not comfortable either...."....Colm: “the not really there sound, the sound of a cassette that’s been copied too many times”^^^

Monday, January 16, 2006

"techno haunted by the ghost of punk"

Talking of spectres stalking on the outskirts, negation, etc, here's some sort of ghost--the ghost of future-passed, or past-futurism, or bygone-portent-of-the-now.... something uncanny like that, anyway. From 1994, a little Melody Maker piece on a group that really tickled my fancy. Context: this was circa the New Wave of New Wave's retro-punk--S.M.A.S.H., These Animal Men, etc.

D-Generation are highly influenced by '60s mod and freakbeat. This Manchester trio took their name from The Eyes' "My Degeneration", a parody of The Who's anthem. D-Generation love the psychedelic/psychotic intensity of freakbeat bands like The Eyes, John's Children, The Creation, but they don't want to recreate it. Psychedelia means abusing technology, they argue, and today that means fucking with samplers and sequencers, not guitars.Unlike These Animal Men and Blur, D-Generation haven't forgotten that mod was short for modernist. The original mods wanted to fast-forward into the future, not replay lostgolden ages. So D-Generation's "psychedelic futurism" draws on ambient and jungle--music that's absolutely NOW, absolutely BRITISH. And instead of the usual iconography of swinging London or English whimsy, D-Generation pledge allegiance to a "dark, deviant tradition"of Englishness that includes The Fall, Syd Barrett, Wyndham Lewis, Powell/Pressburger and Michael Moorcock.D-Generation's atmospheric dance is like a twilight-zone Ultramarine--lots of English imagery, but instead of bucolic bliss, the vibe is urban decay, dread and disassociation. Ontheir EP "Entropy In the UK", "73/93" rails against the "Nostalgia Conspiracy", using Dr Who samples of "no future". D-Generation call their music "techno haunted by the ghost ofpunk" and on 'The Condition Of Muzak' that's literally the case, as it samples Johnny Rotten's infamous taunt: 'ever get the feeling you've been cheated?". Originally, the target wasrave culture itself, but this has widened out, says band ideologue Simon Biddell, "to implicate the entire culture of cynical irony." Then there's "Rotting Hill", a stab at "a 'Ghost Town' for the '90s"; Elgar's patriotic triumphalism is offset by samples from the movie Lucky Jim--"Merrie England? England was never merry!".D-Generation, says Biddell, are dismayed by the way "young people are content to embrace a rock canon handed down to them, and seem unable to embrace the present, let aloneposit a future." But they're optimistic about the emergence of "a counter-scene, bands like Disco Inferno, Bark Psychosis, Pram, Insides, who are using ambient and techno ideas butsaying something about the 'real world', not withdrawing from it".Add D-Generation to the list of this nation's saving graces.

Some of my colleagues thought--assumed, actually--I'd just made up them up out of thin air, so much did they seem like a tissue wrought out of my obsessions of the time. And there's certainly something eerie about the way D-Generation's talk portends of my recent and current preoccupations: the past-gone-mad rift-of-retro nostalgia industry thing, the invocations of postpunk ("Ghost Town", The Fall... and just think of the role that the sentence "ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" plays in Rip It Up and Start Again), hauntology/memoradelia....

Here's the fun bit, though--can you guess which very active member of our little community was actually in this band?

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Patrick McNally proposes "memoradelia", for its "conflation of memory, memorabilia (bcz this music works so much w/physical traces, whether as samples, jacked Penguin tripartite cover schemes or whatever) and psychedelia." I like it, although as Patrick goes on to point out, there's an inherent lameness to the ^^^adelia suffix (not that that's discouraged me in the past!)

The testcard patterns, especially the black and white ones at this archive Matt found (see also the amazing Australian ones that Jon directs us to) look like strange kabbalistic icons. They reminded me of this idea the Monitor crew toyed with but never actually pulled off. Actually this was pre-Monitor, when we did a zine called Margin. We got fed up with trying to sell it to students (all those steps to climb) and decided it was better to do it as a poster magazine, stick it up on noticeboards in student unions, laundry rooms, and such like. Towards the end of its existence, as the influence of Foucault, Baudrillard, et al, kicked in, we got into this sort of radical oppositionality trip, the general idea being that attempts to revitalize student culture or contribute to improving or initiating things in any way were pointless (c.f. earlier issues which were full of ideas like how to renovate the "party" by turning it into, well, basically a temporary autonomous zone) and the goal was instead to undermine and demoralize, the magazine as this spectre on the outskirts, mounting a vampiric critique that would slowly sap people's will to do anything constructive or enjoyable. The penultimate issue was a starkly designed, black-and-white beauty consisting entirely of manifestos about what we were trying to do. And the last line of Paul Oldfield's effort was "the abstract magazine is in preparation". The idea was that the logic of our increasingly meta-meta direction implied that the next step was to do a magazine that had no text, that was just this baleful, unheimlich design--you wouldn't need to read it, just one glance out of the corner of your eye and it would penetrate the recesses of your being and, like, the worm in the bud, slowly undermine your sense of purpose and ability to carry on fulfilling your social obligations, until you sank into utter apathy! Anyway some of those testcards remind me of Paul's plan to create a kind of negationist ikon.

I said "penultimate issue" because the last gasp of Margin was a micro-edition, a single article by David Stubbs extolling failure, that we printed in miniature form, the largest edition just about legible at paperback size, the smallest about the size of a large postage stamp. So in fact at that size it really was like an abstract magazine. And we got into the idea of disseminating this spore of disaffection in the crevices of everyday life, and inveigled our way into student dorms, secreting mini-Margins under toilet seats, eight sheets into a toilet roll, between slices of bread in packets of sliced loaves, and so forth. The idea was to create the idea of a dissident legion, here there and everywhere.

Friday, January 13, 2006

"things are starting up again"--the rezerection of gabba?JUDGEMENT DAY *V* NOSEBLEEDFRIDAY 3 FEBRUARY 2006@ ROOM AT THE TOPBATHGATE SCOTLAND(40 minutes from Glasgow, 20 minutes from Edinburgh)

IN the mid to late 1990's, Judgement Day (Newcastle, England) & Nosebleed (Rosyth, Scotland) party's imported some of the biggest& best in worldwide hardcore talent to the UK, many of them for thefirst time. 2006 see's these 2 legendary organisations join forces to ocontinue where they left off, with no expense spared in continuing to bring the best and most requested h'core DJ's & live acts to the UK.Therefore, for our first party of the year, we are very proud to announcethe biggest line up of international h'core artists to hit these shores for a long long time.

JUDGEMENT DAY ROOM:

ENDYMION(Enzyme Records, Holland - FIRST TIME IN THE UK !)This 2 man DJ team are responsible for some of the biggest gabber/h'coretunes in recent times. Described as 'the new Ruffneck Alliance' these are the most in demand artists throughout Europe.

MARC SMITH(Notorious Vinyl, Scotland)Marc Smith has been at the forefront of the Scottish scene for over 10 years.His upfront & bouncy freeform sets have seen him headline every big & small event in the UK and made him one of the most respected & well liked DJ/Producer's in the scene today.

BASS GENERATOR(Judgement Day, Rezerection, England)Judgement Day would not be the same without the big Guy himself. Bassy G championed the gabber & 'bouncy techno' sound and is a legend throughoutScotland. Tonight he will be playing a stomping hardstyle set.

NOSEBLEED ROOM:

THE SPEEDFREAK (Shockwave, Speedcore, Napalm, Psychik Genocide - Germany - FIRST TIME IN THE UK)The pioneer of the 'speedcore' sound. One of the best h'core techno/terror/speedcore producer's in the world, Martin Damm has been responsible for some of the best tracks of all-time andcontinues to do so. We are very proud to have this legend perform for you and is something that is definitely not to be missed.

SONIC OVERKILL / THE NOIZE JUNKIE - LIVE(Shockwave, Speedcore, Industrial Strength, Germany - FIRST TIME IN THE UK)Another legendary speedcore producer. Also 1 half of Industrial Terror Squad, Colincontinues to produce quality tracks time & time again, mashing up thrash guitars withhoovers and ferocious kick drums, this is one live performance that will never be forgotten.

D-PASSION(The Third Movement, Holland - FIRST TIME IN SCOTLAND)One of the most talented new artists in Holland. Producing a harsh industrialtechno/gabber dancefloor sound with big kick drums which is becoming very populararound Europe. Another DJ set to look forward to.

Tapes :- ALL THE OLD NOSEBLEED SETS ARE CURRENTLY BEING RE-MASTERED ANDWILL BE ON SALE AT THIS EVENT !!!

NEXT PARTY - APRIL 2006 featuring another full line-up of international artists,2 of which will be making there first UK appaerance.

Coming in 2006:

Canadian Speedcore Resistance - Welcome To Terrorland CD & DVD. Featuring a 30 minute mix bySmurf and the footage of the much talked about 'battle' between Plague & Smurf which left both partiesin a sick bloody mess.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

his comments re. half-erased or never-quite-attained songform viz the focus group are interesting--doesn't the word "dub" come from duppy, meaning "ghost"?

also cool was mike's bringing in of the Caretaker's brand-new batch of free downloads. i'd forgotten about the Caretaker stuff completely but that apparational, ectoplasmic sound totally aligns with ghostbox. in fact, back in a may 2004 feeling/really feeling/not feeling i described We'll All Go Riding on A Rainbow thusly:

"makes me think of seances for some reason -- eerie, sort of position normal from beyond the grave, no solid form whatsoever, just tenebrous emanations"

and of course that first position normal record was a big thing for julian house.

what all this suggests is the coalescence (real slow like, and it could certainly do with a few extra recruits; most likely they're already out there and i don't know 'em) of a whole new genre or network of shared sensibility, comparable perhaps to "isolationism".

"hauntology" is my early bid for a name, for the Derrida spectrality resonance, but there must be a snappier--or conversely, more phantasmal and amorphously flavorful one--so get your thinking caps on people!

Monday, January 02, 2006

i think New York London Paris Munich was the very first blog-like entity i ever stumbled on, and it was as a gateway into a whole realm of reading and writing. So big up ya chest Mr Ewing and best wishes for your future activities, writing or otherwise.